With just six days to go until the primary election, there's news breaking every hour it seems. Use this post to post links to news stories, make comments, and discuss anything you want.

(One request: If there's another recent post that's more appropriate, comment there. Let's use this space to talk about campaigns that aren't getting enough coverage. We're looking at you, people obsessed with Merkley/Novick and Obama/Clinton.)

Comments

Anybody check out those Portland Tribune polls? Looks like MacPherson is ahead by 2 with tons of undecideds. Adams can't seem to get past 50% and Dozono is up 6 points, still under 30% though. Its crazy how close a lot of our races are, hard to believe its all over soon!

I'm curious about the about the Merkely/Novick race. Why is there such a high number of undecideds??

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Obama is going to have a solid victory on May 20 and will declare victory on election night. He will more than surpass the pledged delegate majority and will be close if not over the mark on the total needed of 2025.

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Hillary Clinton will run as the Republican VP with McCain, either that, or carry on her heroic struggle into the fall continuing on into the next decade, knowing that she doesn't want to let down her dedicated supporters. Bill will be on the rubber chicken circuit until his ultimate demise from cardiac failure so he can pay for her endless campaign and endless debt in the $100s of millions.

Does anybody know if that poll was a phone survey or focus groups? It is a very small number of people (400) for a normal opinion poll, but it does not say it is a focus group. However, it does say the people were "interviewed" in the Tribune'sstory - which could imply a focus group. The results do not seem totally off, but with such a small number of respondents it is not ideal.

It's a poll. Election polling numbers aren't done with focus groups. If you go to the Portland Tribune or Hibbitts site you can probably get the internals of the poll. Hibbitts has a pretty good track record as an instate pollster.

I had checked out the sites but there was no internals or codebook. I am not attacking the polling operation, overall, the results make sense. The reason I was hesitant is that 400 people is about as small as you want to go. With a sample size that small, the "art" and luck part of polling plays a much larger role i.e. did the firm correctly guess who would vote and what was the response rate.

Not at all Ben, as I said, the results mostly make sense to me, particularly the larger lead for Obama. However, it is a fact that 400 people is very small for an opinion survey, that is why the margin of error is so large. When you get that small, the idiosyncratic nature of a polling firm is more likely to be a factor. If a firm is good or lucky, this is not a problem, but if the firm is not lucky (or has a major error) than the results are problematic. Some of Zogby's polling this cycle has shown this issue. Zogby's results often live and die by his choice of sampling. In the 2004 cycle, he was very good at guessing likely voters, but this cycle, not so much.

Hey A Rab: 400 is the standard size for virtually all political polls in this state. I see lots of polling data and guarantee you that about 95% are at the 400 # size. That is why the +- is at about 4.5 percent.

Hey A Rab: 400 is the standard size for virtually all political polls in this state. I see lots of polling data and guarantee you that about 95% are at the 400 # size. That is why the +- is at about 4.5 percent.

I am being completely honest here, I am not spinning this poll (I will say it for a third time: it is probably correct and its results make sense to me) - I just wanted to see the actual question wording and some info on how they decided who was a likely voter. I studied this in college and I like to see that info with all polls that come out. That said, I know most polls around here are 400, but that does not make that number okay. It means most polls about Oregon have issues with the size of the sample. This makes sense, we are not big and not a particularly swinging swing state, which makes the economics of a big poll prohibitive.

Obama is in Oregon over the weekend. Clinton's Oregon website does not have her scheduled for the next few days. Unless things change, we will probably see less Clinton. Between Oregon and Kentucky, the later looks much more favorable for her.

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